Saturday, March 29, 2008

Stone has said that the film, which will focus on the life and presidency of Bush, won’t be an anti-Bush polemic, but, as he told Daily Variety, “a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?”

The American Dream, baby! I already had some looks at the script:

"They can't impeach me for bombing Cambodia Iraq. The president can bomb anybody he likes."

"Just get me the election; I'll give you your damn war."

"Excuse me, sir, Who's flying this plane right now?"

"You can take your Vietnam Afghanistan and shove it up your ass"

"The village country, which had stood for maybe a thousand years, didn't know we were coming that day. If they had, they would've run. Dubya was the eye of our rage. And through him, our captain Ahab, we would set things right again. That day we loved him."

And the best for last:

"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it."

Attorney Gloria Allred (L) and her client Mandi Hamlin pose with a mannequin and nipple rings in her Los Angeles office after a news conference March 27, 2008 in this photograph provided by Allred. Allred on Thursday said Hamlin was forced by the Transportation Security Administration to remove her nipple rings before she was allowed to board a flight in Texas on February 24, 2008. The TSA gave a pair of pliers to Hamlin in order to remove the rings, according to Allred.

Yep. You know, I get the feeling that this story got so much play, not because of the outrage, but because it gave people a chance to say "nipple rings" over and over. The Villagers are such children.

Friday, March 28, 2008

He was displaying one of these machines. (The actual episode is the one linked to and worth checking out.)

Husband and I mused about investing in the company (not that we have anything to invest) – Dean Kamen seemed pretty amazing and that was long before I saw all of the other fabulous things that he has invented.

Digby points to this article in the Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi and I thought the excerpt she used matched my observations exactly:

Now, no one is suggesting that there shouldn't be some reaction to genuinely toxic ideas, or that all criticism of racist or unpatriotic comments is unfounded. But what we're getting with all of these scandals isn't a sober exchange of ideas but more of an ongoing attempt to instill in the public a sort of permanent fear of uncomfortable ideas, and to reduce public discourse to a kind of primitive biological mechanism, like the nervous system of a squid or a shellfish, one that recoils reflexively from any stimuli. And the campaign is where you really see this process at work full-time. It's something I noticed while spending so much of the last year (and, before, so much of the years 2003 and 2004) on the campaign trail talking to prospective voters, listening to their complaints and their fears and their (often fleeting) enthusiasms. During this time, I started to notice a pattern, comprised of several elements.

The first is a truly remarkable tendency of seemingly intelligent people to work themselves into genuine outrage over information they didn't even know about twenty minutes ago, until they heard it on television, or coming out of the mouths of a candidate.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

I'm not sure what the rules are for nabbing pics off other people's sites, but I visit Dependable Renegade several times a day for the funny. It's quick, it's easy, and there's always something for everyone! I like the wrestling kitty one, too. Watertiger's one of my fave commenters, too...

I can't bring myself to read more than a graf into the stories before my revulsion of the killing and the shameful pandering of the news media in this case make me want to throw up. And my local news media is certainly at fault. Wednesday's headline in the Register was, "Banker Bludegons Family After Car Exhaust Fails."

I, like my friend Nonpartisan, love the Progressive Era of history. I particularly love muckraking journalism where ever it can be found, either on the Internet or in small independent journals. These publications give me hope for our future while the large media disgusts and disappoints me day after day.

The Yellow journalism - the sensational, bloody, gory, freakish focus we have of the facts and not the context - I desperately wish we could kill and bury Yellow Journalism forever. Perhaps we can't have muckraking without yellow, but by dog, if we can, we should.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Mr. Bush explains what we've been doing in Iraq for the last five years.

h/t Jeff Huber, Pen and SwordIt's not often you can say of blogging friends, "I've met that person, we had beers, we talked about blogging and blogsites, politics, music interests, they came inside my house and met my family." I was fortunate enough to meet D.J. Moonbat 2 years back. A few weeks later, Lurch, of Main and Central stopped by. Unfortunately, Valentines Day of this year I learned that he had passed away.

I find myself going back and remembering where I first encountered Lurch. I know we first talked at Jo Fish's place, Democratic Veteran. Upon stopping by Jeff Huber's place today, I remember reading his comments there as well. I was just getting my blogging legs then, coming out from being a lurker. With the help of Jo Fish, he started Main and Central with some other Veterans. I was always amazed at how prolific he was. Story after story... sometimes, 6 in one day. I have a tough time putting out one or two pieces a week. It wasn't only how productive he was, his articles had substance. I think Lurch was the best at reporting on the lack of equipment (such as Body Armor) the troops had in Iraq. His commentary on the War of the Bridges in Iraq was simply outstanding!

I'm glad he took the time to visit. I was able to go all out because it was a weekend when he stopped by. We had a large Mexican feast in his honor. That's what we do in AZ in early summer, Bar-B-Que some marinated chicken and beef for tacos, all the trimmings, some Corona or Dos Equis all poolside, laughing and talking. He loved it. Easy going, smiling the whole time. He spoke lovingly of his late wife. That's how I'll remember him...

In short, I miss my friend Lurch... RIP. He, like Steve Gilliard, leaves a "blogging void" of which few can replace. I find myself visiting Veteran websites for a glimpse of Lurch. He would have laughed at that picure and comment of bu$h...

Church author Delivers a Survey on American Politics Instead of Keeping to Bible

DES MOINES, IOWA - Nationally known author Tex Sample today delivered a devastating critique of American Politics to a packed room of United Methodist pastors at the downtown Marriott this afternoon.

The ministers afterward went to their afternoon break in differing emotional states. Many looked smug, several were muttering under their breath, and at least a dozen had the look of half-concussed puppies. Many were outraged - tradition holds that the after lunch speaker is usually prosaic if not dull, and always soft-spoken. Dozens of pastors were forced to listen instead of slipping off to slumber. Many of them also cited their different politics and the annoyance to listening to an, "old hippie who has no clue," according to Bob Rivers, pastor of Dinkville United Methodist Church.

"Sample has some nerve. What do the economic lies he's making up on the screen have anything to do with preaching from the Bible or for the monthly Pro-Life meeting we host every month? Those are our Christian priorities - along with lower taxes and the right to bear arms."

Sample, citing several dozen statistics and graphs from prominent economists, political science theorists, and historians, argued that, "These issues are not only relevant to our congregations, but also to the increasingly skewed political opinion spectrum that we're exposed to."

Sample, a retired sociologist for the Saint Paul School of Theology in Minnesota, even asserted that the culture of America represents a totalitarian system of societal control and justice that appears almost an inverse of fascism. "Instead of a unitary government that strongly influences and enriches a capitalist class, our duopoly government is enriched and controlled by a capitalist class."

Marriott management had no comment, other than noting that such an inflammatory lecture hadn't produced the expected unrest; the United Methodist ministers did not march out on the street chanting, nor did masked protesters trash the snack buffet tables.

The Des Moines City Council pledged vigilance and promised to bring up a motion condemmning the conference's language for being , "unproductive".

A couple have been given three months to get three of their six overweight kids slimmer - or have ALL of them taken into care.

The warning centres on their fattest children - a 12-year-old son who is 16 stone, his 12st sister, 11, and a girl who weighs four stone aged just three.

And social workers have threatened that unless the tough weight loss ultimatum is met through diet and the children taking football and dance lessons, they will seize them and their three siblings to safeguard their welfare.

So, the best way to get kids to lose weight is to traumatize them by taking them away from their parents? Is it abuse, do you think, to enable children to get morbidly obese? It's not like they get to do the shopping, so the kids are dependent upon the parents to feed them nutrional foods and ensure they exercise... Hmmm. Kate's post poses some questions, and I agree, but it's not as black and white as it first appears, is it?

“We need to bring the two campaigns together. I think the two campaigns should take a deep breath and stop talking for a while. Just reflect and start talking about the issues affecting the country like the war, like the economy, subprime lending, housing, the enormous problems of gas prices, and stop this internal, personal bickering that is right now hurting us enormously"...

...‘We cannot afford to continue fighting’......the two candidates and the party need to agree on who the candidate will be and not take the battle into Denver. “We cannot afford to continue fighting and being so negative,” he said.

A measure of the bitterness the campaign has created in the party is a recent poll in which 37 percent of Clinton supporters said they will not vote for Obama if he is the candidate, and 26 percent of his supporters said they will not vote for Clinton.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

BAGHDAD - Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon...

Was this the cause of my nightmares last night?It's not OK that I was irritable as hell with my family all day and I lashed out at them! Time for me to regroup, apologize and try again for a better day. That's all I can really do when I get into one of these funks!

Good thing I mowed yesterday, it's pouring down rain this morning. We stopped doing Easter a while back - my kids and I are indifferent to religion, but we do love our jelly beans. I used to love the sunrise services when I was a kid, though; we had masses in Latin and they did the whole stations of the cross thing, then the big egg hunt afterwards. It was an event, not just Sunday service. When my kids were little, I would go crazy with the baskets and egg hunt (then treasure hunts when they learned to read). They can buy their own candy now, so they're not willing to hunt up marshmallow peeps anymore.

Anyone else hear about this? Rachel Maddow covered it Friday, and this is from dday at hullabaloo:

At issue are the Concerned Local Citizens groups (CLCs) that we have been paying for over a year not to kill us and instead to defend their territories and drive out Al Qaeda in Iraq. You could not set up a more potentially unstable situation if you tried. The CLCs have no fealty to the national government; in fact they are if anything oppositional to it. The Shiites in power are afraid of incorporating the CLCs into the Iraqi security forces. It has been alleged that the CLCs include former insurgents and rogues, and they are primarily interested in 1) receiving money, and 2) defending their corner of Iraq from all invaders, foreign and domestic. This is not a path to national reconciliation but balkanization.

And then the military and the Administration went and did the worst thing possible - they forgot to pay everyone on time. That's right - the incompetents that still reign throughout the Bush Administration aren't paying the bills. And so we may see a general strike.